Stable-hand '˜stabbed woman after she took his job'

A man who resented losing his job as a stable-hand to a 60-year-old woman left her blood-covered body lying in a barn after carrying out a 'vicious' knife attack, a court has heard.
Fiona SouthwellFiona Southwell
Fiona Southwell

Daniel Edwards, 22, is accused of murdering Fiona Southwell, who was found dead with 19 stab wounds to her head and body at a farm near Hornsea, East Yorkshire, in July last year, Hull Crown Court heard.

The jury was told Edwards, who was replaced by Miss Southwell after being sacked at Grange Farm, discussed asking for his old role back the day after her death.

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David Gordon, prosecuting, told the trial Edwards may have held a grudge against Miss Southwell.

He said: “While the defendant may have made an outward show of not being bothered about losing his job looking after Pamela Newton’s horses, in fact, he harboured resentment about it and this may have provided him with a motive.”

He added: “This might sound extreme, most well-balanced individuals who lose their job wouldn’t then resort to violence against the person taking over their job but there it is.”

The Crown say the attack was “vicious, relatively protracted” and involved at least 19 wounds being inflicted to her head and body with a sharp weapon.

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Mr Gordon said Miss Southwell “had no known enemies and yet the attack would seem to suggest someone who had a grudge or resentment against her or somebody who was in a disturbed state of mind or both.”

The jury heard Miss Southwell, who was single and lived with her brother and elderly mother, was seen working at Grange Farm on the morning of the murder on July 15.

Her brother, Samuel Southwell, who became worried when she did not return home for lunch or tea, went to look for her and found her in a barn, lying on her back behind a wheelbarrow, the jury was told.

Mr Gordon said she had been stabbed repeatedly, with wounds that entered her brain, severed arteries and penetrated her lung, and had bled heavily, with blood present on her body, the ground and the barn walls and door.

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The court heard Edwards had found new employment at a neighbouring farm, Maxholme, and was working there on the morning of the murder.

The following day, he went to work and asked his employer’s partner, John Tierney, if he should ask for his old job back, the trial heard.

Mr Gordon said: “The defendant asked John Tierney if he thought that he, the defendant, should ask Pamela Newton about getting his old job back looking after the horses now that Miss Southwell was dead.”

Edwards was arrested at his family home in King Street, Hornsea, on the evening of July 16 and clothing, stained with blood belonging to Miss Southwell, was recovered from his bedroom, the court heard.

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Miss Southwell’s blood was also found on Edwards’s ankle; a kitchen knife, found discarded in a hedgerow near the farm and from a block kept at Maxholme; and a blood-stained child’s vest, thought to have been used to wipe the knife clean and of the type used as cloths at Maxholme, the jury was told.

Edwards’s DNA was also found on areas of the vest and blood on his clothing suggested he was near to Miss Southwell as she lay bleeding from her injuries and still alive, Mr Gordon said.

The prosecutor said Edwards sent a number of text messages to a childhood friend in the days leading up to the murder, which may suggest he was “in a disturbed state of mind”.

He said: “On the face of it, the fact that a person is sacked wouldn’t normally provide any kind of reason to do harm to their replacement but, in this particular situation, we have, additionally, a young man who, in the hours leading up to the murder, was expressing, to a childhood friend of his, some distress, in the sense that he was feeling he was going to have a breakdown and his ‘head was f***ed’.”